The Inevitable Need For Mobile App Quality Assurance

The rapid increase in the number of mobile apps has brought a substantial rise in competition when it comes to mobile app development. According to Statistica, there were more than 6.5 million apps on Google Play and Apple App Store as of May 2018. Considering these huge numbers, one can say that there is a dedicated mobile app for almost every user’s needs. Consequently, if you plan to develop and launch a mobile app, you have to ensure that it’s going to be engaging and user-friendly, if not unique. A successful mobile app development strategy must focus on delivering great user experiences across devices. Quality assurance services ensure that a mobile app performs at its peak efficiency with minimal disruptions on all quality parameters.   

We, at Oodles, provide on-demand quality assurance services to deliver high-quality mobile app development experiences to clients. Our QA engineers use agile testing methodologies and advanced tools to ensure that your app performs seamlessly across devices. Based on our past experiences, we highlight the main challenges with mobile app development and how we can address them through QA testing.   

Also read Improving Quality Assurance Services To Overcome Software Challenges

Common Quality Issues In Mobile App Development

Performance Issues

Performance issues are often linked with the scalability of a mobile app. In many cases, the app performs consistently well for a limited number of users. However, as the userbase increases, the app performance depreciates, resulting in bad user experiences. 

Usability Issues

These issues are reported generally when the user faces difficulties with the app interface. If some part of the app is not accessible for any reason, it negatively impacts on the overall user experience. Usability issues occur due to inefficacious QA software testing and the QA engineers must perform usability tests to avoid these instances.

Functionality Issues

Functionality issues are reported when several anomalies are detected in the app functionality, causing disruptions in the navigation flow. If a mobile app lacks a functional user interface, users will find it difficult to perform basic functions like signup/login, messaging, and app updates. 

Security Vulnerabilities

Security flaws may prove detrimental for the app users as they put the user data and privacy at stake. App security issues are generally associated with user authentication, data storage, and transfers (unencrypted). 

Agile QA Testing Approach To Overcome Quality Issues

At Oodles Technologies, we follow a step-by-step QA software testing strategy to proactively detect and resolve various types of app issues. Below are the tests we perform typically on a mobile app:

Basic Functionality Test / Smoke Test

We usually start with a smoke test that includes a basic check-up of the app’s functionality. It is to ensure that every button or menu works perfectly across multiple app screens. A smoke test is critical to ensure that all the basic functionalities of the app are finely-tuned to meet the users’ expectations. The functionality tests also enable QA engineers to identify potential points of failure to avoid instances of downtime and app crashes. 

Code Review and Analysis

Code review is an essential part of the software development lifecycle that may reveal several software glitches and potential points of failure. It is always wise to get your code peer-reviewed before pushing it further. However, we recommend performing code reviews after successfully conducting the basic functionality test. It saves you from the additional burden of bug detection as the entire process is granularized.  

Unit Testing

Unit testing enables QA engineers to test individual units or components of a mobile app. It is to ensure that every part of the app is fully functional and performs seamlessly across devices. Unit testing is usually followed by three other types of quality tests:

• Integration Testing: Individual units are combined and tested together rather than testing each unit separately.

• System Testing: System tests are performed after unit testing and integration testing to ensure that the app works smoothly with all components combined.

• Acceptance Testing: Acceptance tests are performed to evaluate an app’s acceptance level to ensure that it is compliant with the client’s requirements.

Performance Testing

Performance testing is a critical part of the software development lifecycle that evaluates an app’s performance, stability, and responsiveness under a given workload. It is generally performed to identify and resolve issues with the app’s scalability, responsiveness, load time and navigation flow.

You may also be interested in reading Integration Testing and Its Types

 

Conclusion

Conducting the aforementioned tests ensures that all your app components are finely-tuned as per the requirements. It is advisable to perform as many tests as you can to ensure that the app performs seamlessly across the supported devices. Some other tests that may prove effective to optimize a mobile app are regression tests, compatibility tests, GUI tests, and synchronization tests. Check out our “Developer Insights” to learn more about these tests.